Apache 1.3.6 is the current stable release. Users of Apache
1.3.4 and earlier on Unix systems should upgrade to this
version. Read the Guide to
1.3.6 for information about changes between 1.3.4 and
1.3.6 and between 1.2 and 1.3.6.

Most bugs listed below include a link to the entry in the
Apache bug database where the problem is being tracked. These
entries are called "PR"s (Problem Reports). Some bugs do not
correspond to problem reports if they are found by
developers.

Bugs in 1.3.6

These bugs have been found in 1.3.6 and will be fixed in the
next release. Because of the major differences between
Windows and Unix, these are separated into bugs which affect
Windows systems only, and other bugs (which may affect
Windows as well). Unix users can ignore the bugs listed in
the Windows section.

Windows-specific Bugs

Various cleanups have been applied to the Win32 code. These
include changes to the shutdown and restart code to allow
these events to be processed immediately. PR#3815

Other Bugs

mod_autoindex looks for an exact content-type
of text/html. This breaks if HTML documents
are labelled with an extension, such as a character set. PR#4524

Piped error logs could cause a segfault if an error occured
during configuration after a restart. PR#4456

Warnings on some systems that do not support quads (64 bits
in length). Internal changes to the
ap_snprintf() routine have been made to handle
quads on systems that support them.

The server will core dump if a module attempts a redirect
without correctly setting the Location header.

Patches for bugs in Apache 1.3.6 will be made available in
the apply_to_1.3.6 subdirectory of the patches
directory on the Apache site. Some new features and other
unofficial patches are available in the 1.3
patches directory. For details of all previously reported
bugs, see the Apache bug
database and known
bugs pages. Many common configuration questions are
answered in the Apache FAQ.

Mass virtual hosting support

A patch and new module that provides better dynamic support
for large numbers of IP based virtual hosts has been
submitted. Dynamic support is useful if you have a very large
number of virtual hosts and do not want to individually list
and configure them with their own VirtualHost
section in the Apache configuration file. This module
provides a directive VirtualDocumentRoot to
allow the document root to be determined dynamically by the
hostname (or IP address) of the site being accessed. The
module also provides directives for script aliases and some
extra variables for logging.

Removal of mxb negotiation parameters

The mod_negotiation module currently has support
for processing of mxb parameters in Accept
headers. This support will be removed in Apache as the
mxb parameters are not part of the HTTP or other
standards and the parameters are not used by any known
client.

Updated digest module

A updated version of the digest module,
mod_digest is being worked on. Digest
authentication uses an MD5 hash to provide a more secure
password system, but only works with supporting browsers. The
recent changes include:

Updating the module to conform to the latest digest
authentication draft standard

Improved validation checking and header parsing

Better nonce support including a
cryptographically secure random nonce and nonce checking.

New releases of Apache will include a compile-time directive
to enable XML 1.0
support. XML is the Extensible Markup Language,
a data format for structured document interchange.
Internally, Apache will use a subset of the Expat XML parser
toolkit from James Clark. Expat is widely regarded by the
XML community as the most advanced parser available, and it
has already been adopted by companies such as Netscape. Expat
is released under the MPL
1.1 licence.

A number of add-on modules will find XML support in the
standard Apache distribution useful. XML is required for the
Apache Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning module,
mod_dav. mod_dav allows users to
edit and manage files on remote web servers. Other modules
such as PHP will also be able to benefit from XML support.

O'Reilly and Associates are hosting an Open Source
Convention in Monterey, California between August 21st
and 24th 1999. As part of the convention there are a set of
conference tracks about Apache and Apache-related software.
Although this is not an official Apache Group conference,
many of the Apache core developers will be presenting
sessions and tutorials.

"If we don't offer features that justify the price of our
servers, we only have ourselves to blame. Apache is simply
better than us when it comes to hosting multiple sites on a
single machine. Windows 2000 will fix this."